The bombs are still falling in Lebanon and Palestine as I write this, about 30 days since it all started.
Our govt, as other Islamic countries, is keen to sent a peace keeping force to Lebanon once the UN Security Council finally decides to do the right thing.
Personally, I do not believe that the Israeli will allow any Islamic countries to contribute troops to augment the current UNIFIL.
The current UNIFIL is manned by mostly European, PNG, Nepal and Chinese soldiers as does the UN observers in Palestine.
Anyhow, to sent 1,000 soldiers all the way to Lebanon will take some time especially the mechanised segment of the force.
A force of 1,000 soldiers needs around 300 vehicles – APC, trucks, ambulances and light command vehicles.
It will take our navy about one week to get their three transport ships all the way to Lebanon once the order is given.
Perhaps we should not wait for the UN to authorise the peace keeping force before sending our ships out. That way the vehicles will be in Lebanon when our boys get there and not two weeks later.
Furthermore, as Lebanon is quite far way, we should sent at least two C-130 Hercules to Egypt or Turkey now to wait for our boys to arrive in Middle East.
The reason that is we can fly out our boys (the recon party) directly to Lebanon via Egypt or Turkey within four or five hours instead of the almost 24 hours flight they have to endure if they took the Hercules all the way from Subang.
How to get them to Turkey or Egypt? We can always charter Malaysia Airlines.
If the US or UK can use civil airliners to send their soldiers to the staging country, why cant we?
Of course, the spooks can always fly with the two Hercules we sent to the staging country.
I also hope our logisticians are already looking to de-tropicalise the vehicles they intend to send to Lebanon and stock up in winter clothing.
Lebanon is not like other Middle East country, the country is almost temperate.